14. Elise
— ? —
Elise
Blood dries faster than you’d think.
That’s what I find myself looking at twenty minutes later, when the shouting has stopped and the house has gone quiet and I’m still standing in the middle of a bedroom that isn’t mine.
A trail of small dark spots on the floorboards going out the door and down the hall. Already going brown at the edges.
I get a cloth from the bathroom and clean them up one at a time, on my knees, because if I don’t do something with my hands I’m going to start shaking and I’d rather not.
Rowan lets me. He doesn’t offer to help and he doesn’t tell me to leave it, which are the two things anyone else would have done.
“He’ll be sitting on the end of the bed,” he says eventually, from the doorway. “Looking at his hands. That’s what he does.”
“You’ve seen this before.”
“He was nineteen the last time. Put his fist through a door at our mother’s house and then sat on the stairs for two hours looking at his knuckles like they belonged to someone else.” He touches his lip and winces. “She told everyone it was a burglary.”
I sit back on my heels with the cloth in my hand.
“I should talk to him.”
“Should you?” Rowan comes off the doorframe, wincing as the movement tugs at his split lip. “The man just took a swing at me and put you into a doorframe. I’m not exactly feeling generous.”
He has a point. But something about leaving Simon alone in that state doesn’t sit right. Not because I care about his feelings, I’m not sure I do anymore, but because wounded animals are dangerous.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Elise…”
“Not to make peace. Just to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.” I touch Rowan’s face, careful of the bruising already blooming along his jaw. “Like drive drunk into a flooded road.”
“If he touches you again…”
“He won’t.”
I’m less certain than I sound, but I need Rowan to stay here. This conversation has to happen without an audience.
I find Simon sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his knuckles like he’s never seen them before. The whiskey bottle is in pieces on the floorboards under the window.
He was nineteen the last time.
“Come to gloat?” His voice is flat, emptied out.
“Come to make sure you’re not going to do anything dramatic.” I lean against the doorframe, keeping the distance. “Like get in the truck.”
“Roads are impassable. Mabel’s husband barely made it through the last time he tried.”
“I know. So we’re stuck here. All of us. Which means we need to work out how to be in the same house without anyone else bleeding.”
Simon laughs, and there’s nothing in it.
“Coexist. That’s a nice word for it.”
“What word would you prefer?”
“I don’t know.” He finally looks up, and the rawness in his face catches me off guard. “I don’t know anything anymore. I thought I knew what my life was.”
“Now you’re finding out the story you told yourself wasn’t the whole truth.”
“Something like that.”
I should feel satisfied. I should feel vindicated, watching the man who did this to me finally standing in the consequences. Mostly I just feel tired.
“I’m not going to apologize for Rowan,” I say. “I know that’s what you want. I know you think this is revenge, or betrayal, or…”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” The word comes out certain. “It’s not about you, Simon. That’s the part you can’t get to. Not everything is about you.”
“You’re sleeping with my brother. How is that not about me?”
“Because I’m not doing it to hurt you. I’m doing it because he sees me.” I stop, because I’m giving away more than I mean to. “In a way you stopped doing a long time ago.”
His jaw tightens. “I saw you.”
“You looked at me. There’s a difference.” I push off the doorframe and go to the window. The rain hasn’t let up. “Do you know when I knew it was over? Really knew?”
“When?”
“That Christmas party in December. I was standing at the bar and you walked straight past me to talk to someone about something, and you didn’t glance my way once. Not once, the entire night. And I stood there and realized I couldn’t remember the last time you’d looked at me on purpose.”
“That’s not…” He stops. Starts again. “I was stressed. Work was…”
“Work was always the excuse. Work, or you were tired, or something I’d done, or some mysterious thing I could never quite put my finger on.” I turn around. “I spent two years thinking I was going mad.”
“I never stopped wanting you…”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out sharp enough to cut. “Don’t tell me you wanted me while you were sneaking around with my best friend. Don’t rewrite it into something I have to be gracious about.”
His mouth opens, then closes. He looks down at his hands again.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “For hitting Rowan. For pushing you. That was…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that was. That’s not me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not.” He meets my eyes, and there’s something almost desperate in it. “I know I’ve done unforgivable things. But I’m not… I’m not violent. I’m not that person.”
“The alcohol.”
“Isn’t an excuse. I know.” He stands, swaying slightly. “I’m going to stop drinking. For the rest of the time we’re here. I can’t trust myself when I’m like this.”
It isn’t an apology for the affair. It isn’t an acknowledgment that the marriage is over. It’s a narrow, specific admission that he crossed a line tonight.
I notice exactly what’s missing.
“Okay,” I say carefully. “That’s a start.”
“It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough.” He moves toward me and I tense, but he stops a few feet short. “I just need you to know I’m going to fix this.”
“Simon…”
“I know you don’t believe me. I know I’ve given you no reason to.” His voice cracks slightly. “But I’m not giving up on us, Elise. I can’t.”
I hear the words for what they are.
He isn’t surrendering. He’s regrouping.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I say, backing toward the door. “When you’ve sobered up. When we’ve both had time.”
“Tomorrow,” he agrees.
But there’s something in his eyes, a calculation, a determination, that makes my skin prickle.
I leave him there and close the door behind me.
***
Rowan is in the kitchen holding a bag of frozen peas to his jaw.
“Very glamorous.”
“It’s all we had.” He lowers the peas, revealing a bruise spreading across his face in shades of purple and yellow. “How was he?”
“Apologetic. About the punch.” I pull out a chair and sit down heavily. “Only about the punch.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“It’s nothing.” I meet his eyes. “He said he’s not giving up on the marriage. He called me his wife.”
Rowan goes very still. “What did you say?”
“That we’d talk tomorrow. I didn’t know what else to say.” I rub my temples, a headache building behind my eyes. “He’s not accepting that it’s finished. He thinks he can still turn it around.”
“Can he?”
The question sits there between us.
“No,” I say finally. “Whatever we had, whatever I thought we had, it died a long time ago. I’m just now getting around to the funeral.”
“But?”
“There’s no but.” I stand, suddenly restless. “I’m tired, Rowan. I’m tired of this cabin and this situation and my own feelings, which refuse to be simple about any of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean part of me hates him. For all of it. Every lie.” I pace to the window and back. “And part of me is sad, which makes no sense at all.”
“It makes perfect sense.” He sets down the peas and crosses to me. “You loved him. Or you loved the version of him you believed in. Grief doesn’t check whether the person deserved it.”
“I shouldn’t be grieving. I should be relieved. Angry. Something clean.”
“Nothing’s clean.” His hands find my shoulders. “You’re allowed to feel whatever you feel about it. Even the parts that don’t make sense.”
I look up at him, this man who keeps saying exactly the right thing, who keeps showing up exactly when I need him to.
It would be so easy to fall into him. To let his certainty carry me through this.
But I’ve been carried before. I’ve let someone else define what was real before. And I know exactly where that ends.
“I need to sleep,” I say, stepping back from his hands. “By myself tonight.”
The corners of his mouth pull down, disappointment maybe, but he nods. “Okay. Down the hall if you change your mind.”
“Rowan.” He pauses at the doorway. “Thank you. For standing up for me.”
“Always.”
The word settles into my chest, warm and weighted.
I want to believe it. I want to trust that always means what it sounds like.
But Simon said always too, once. In front of a room full of people, with his mother in the front row.
Words are easy. It’s the follow-through that matters.
***
I don’t sleep well.
Dreams chase me through the dark hours: Simon’s face twisting with rage, blood on the floorboards, a phone ringing somewhere I can’t reach it.
By dawn I’ve given up.
I go down to make coffee, moving quietly to avoid waking either of the men currently making my life significantly more complicated. The kitchen is gray and cold and the rain is still going.
I’m halfway through my first cup when Simon appears in the doorway.
He looks terrible. Pale, hollow-eyed, the bruise on his cheekbone turning spectacular colors. But his eyes are clear. Sober.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
“Not really.”
He crosses to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup, and we stand there in the weight of everything neither of us is saying.
“I meant what I said last night,” he says finally. “About not giving up.”
“Simon…”
“I know you think it’s over. I know you’ve already moved on, mentally, emotionally, whatever.” He turns to face me. “But we had something. And I made a mistake.”
“A mistake.” I set my cup down carefully. “You keep calling it that. Like you tripped and fell into a year-long affair with my best friend.”
“I’m not trying to minimize…”
“That’s exactly what you’re trying to do.” My voice is quiet but it has an edge on it. “And I’m not defining the word for you again. You know what you did.”
“I know…”
“Do you? Because every time you call it a mistake it sounds like you’re working up to telling me I’m overreacting.”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to save my marriage.” The words come out raw. “I’m trying to find some way to fix what I broke.”
For a second I almost feel sorry for him.
Then I think about the four months of Lilia’s texts. Thinking of you. How are you holding up?
“You should have thought about that before,” I say. “Before the first time. Before the hundredth time. Before every single choice you made to put her ahead of me.”
“I didn’t put her ahead of you…”
“You did. Every time you lied, you chose her. Every time you let me think I was imagining things, you chose her.”
“I’m choosing you. I’m choosing you now.”
“It’s too late.”
The words fall between us like a door closing.
Simon stares at me, something coming apart behind his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” My voice is steady. “I’ve had four months. Four months of grief and rage and trying to work out how the man I married could do that to me. I’m finished.”
“Because of Rowan.”
“No. Because of you.” I pick up my cup. “Rowan is a separate thing. Whatever happens between him and me, that’s not why I’m leaving you. I’m leaving you because of what you did.”
I leave him standing there with his coffee going cold in his hands.
It doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like closing a book I’ve already read too many times.